Month: December 2017

Being able to identify microbes in real time aboard the International Space Station, without having to send them back to Earth for identification first, would be revolutionary for the world of microbiology and space exploration. The Genes in Space-3 team turned that possibility into a reality this year, when it completed the first-ever sample-to-sequence process …

Vertical farming has gained a lot of traction over the past few years and is being heralded as the green solution to the growing global food crisis. Consisting of crops stacking in vertical layers, this style of farming can yield more crops per square acre than traditional farming or greenhouses, and also uses less water, …

OneWeb is launching a global 2.5 gigabit per second satellite internet service by 2021. OneWeb received permission from the FCC in June to deploy a global network of 720 low-Earth orbit satellites using the Ka (20/30 GHz) and Ku (11/14 GHz) frequency bands. Earlier in 2017, OneWeb started building a satellite manufacturing factory which will …

2017 has been a booming year for the field of artificial intelligence. While A.I. and data-focused machine learning have been around for decades, the algorithmic technologies have made their presence known in a variety of industries and contexts this year. A.I. Spotted An Eight-Planet Solar System: Successful astronomical discoveries often center around studying data—lots and …

Monetizing VR content continues to be a tricky challenge for creators and publishers alike. There’s just hardly any rules of thumb to follow as the industry busies itself with building up a track record of trial and error, and while the addressable market of geared-up users continues to grow. Paid content works in some cases, …

Energous announced that its “wireless 2.0” non-contact charger had been approved by the FCC. Today, two new Apple wireless power patent applications were published by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Coincidence? Perhaps. But it looks like we might finally get truly wireless charging devices in 2018. In 2013, Energous began work on a zero-contact …

Florida’s Space Coast could see up to three dozen launches in 2018 thanks to government and commercial payload missions that will fly on SpaceX and United Launch Alliance rockets. Spacex should have about 30 of the launches. Elon Musk announced the Spacex Heavy will launch his red Tesla roadster and target reaching Mars. If schedules …

The UK has achieved its greenest year ever in terms of how the nation’s electricity is generated, National Grid figures reveal. The rise of renewable energy helped break 13 clean energy records in 2017. In June, for the first time, wind, nuclear and solar power generated more UK power than gas and coal combined. Britain …

A Stanford-led group of leading AI thinkers called the AI100 has launched an index that will provide a comprehensive baseline on the state of artificial intelligence and measure technological progress in the same way the gross domestic product and the S&P 500 index track the U.S. economy and the broader stock market. They have produced …

The global economy as a whole has gained momentum, according to economists at the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE), in a shared expansion rarely seen. This recovery results in part from more accommodative monetary policies and fiscal policies that have shifted from appreciable restraint to mild stimulus. * In the United States, the prospects …